How I Started A $4K/Month Website About Entrepreneurship And Personal Development
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Khoa Bui, I’m the CEO of YouBeRelentless, an online resource that provides tips on entrepreneurship and personal development.
Our customers/readers are entrepreneurs and business owners who run successful companies and also startups who dream of having their own business.
In terms of income, I’m currently bringing in approximately $4,000 per month in the form of Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, product sales, consultation, podcast interviews, and lead generation.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
My experience began when I started my first business in web design in my early 20s where I bootstrapped the business and learned how to get clients, generate sales, hire people, etc. My first business was where I learned everything about the business which lead me to read books and studying great entrepreneurs.
I've continued this passion in entrepreneurship where I access people who are successful in business and provide information to the masses on how to achieve the same results they have.
Back in 2016, I was admitted to hospital due to a cancer scare. Luckily, it wasn’t serious and it was a false alarm. However, this incident made me think about what I wanted to do with my life so then I made the decision to start a business I was passionate about and something I could work on for the rest of my life.
The result was YouBeRelentless where I would continually write articles, conduct interviews, podcasts, create videos, and share valuable tips and information about entrepreneurship and personal development. My experience began when I started my first business in web design in my early 20s where I bootstrapped the business and learned how to get clients, generate sales, hire people, etc. My first business was where I learned everything about the business which lead me to read books and studying great entrepreneurs. I've continued this passion in entrepreneurship where I access people who are successful in business and provide information to the masses on how to achieve the same results they have.
I was working at the time of course but It wasn’t something I was truly passionate about. However, the thing that I had always stuck to was writing. For as long as I could remember, I’ve been writing in journals, scrap pieces of paper, notepads, notebooks, and so forth.
I figured that I could take that passion for writing, pour it into my blog site, and also write and talk about things I was passionate about which was business and entrepreneurship.
I started writing articles every single day and over the coming months, my traffic started to increase. I started to post videos and then my views start to increase. I started to do podcast interviews and my listeners started to increase.
Today the website is generating over 100k views over several months and it’s growing fast.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
I came up with the idea while living in a small tiny bedroom in a sharehouse in Sydney. I believe in focusing on one core thing for decades and the word that seemed to resonate with my life is the word “relentless”.
I then added the word “you be relentless” and I went with it. Here’s a fun fact, the word “you be relentless” wasn’t created for other people, it was actually created for me to keep me focused on my business.
I think this is what Steve Jobs did when he was fired from Apple. He started a company called “NEXT” and I personally believe he named it that way so that he could stay focused on the future instead of the past.
I bought the domain name, registered the hosting, and then installed WordPress. I did some tweaks to the design and then lift off.
Every day, I created articles and wrote content after work. I would work 9-5, come home, eat dinner, and then start writing an article and repeat this over several years.
My process for this was really simple. I always write something that I'm truly passionate about and not for the money or traffic etc. It must be something I've experienced in the past and or something that I'm currently experiencing such as learning a new method of digital marketing, or a new book I've read, etc. I'm always reading books, creating something online, and learning many things so it's easy for me to share this information with my audience and write about it.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Although my launch date was when I registered the domain name, the official launch was when I made the commitment to write articles.
When I registered YouBeRelentless, I had so many ideas to implement, I honestly didn’t know what content to push out onto the website. I actually spent hours creating animation, doing voice-over and so forth which was my content.
I struggled for many months trying to figure out what I was going to do and what I should focus on.
However, on December 1st, 2016, something happened whilst I was flying from Sydney to Melbourne. As I was sitting there on the plane, a voice inside my head said the following “Just write”.
When I heard that voice, I knew exactly what I needed to do. So I opened up my laptop and wrote a 2,000-word article in 20 minutes! When I landed, I got access to WIFI and I uploaded the article.
It felt great and felt that it’s what I should be doing. It was then I made the commitment to continually write articles for my website and the rest is history.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Since 2016, my traffic has increased by 300% every year. The first year was very slow, the traffic I was getting was only one or two per day.
Today, it’s in the hundreds and continually increases every month. It’s really exciting looking at your analytics and seeing the growth of your business.
Obviously my content strategy is volume. The more content pieces you have, the more traffic you can get to your site. However, I would also like to add that if you mix content and passion together, it’s a powerful mix and you will increase your traffic whilst write engaging content that connects with your readers.
I didn’t spend any money on advertising and it was pure organic traffic. Obviously, when you write so many articles, it gets picked up by many people around the world and they share your articles that drive more traffic to your site whilst increasing your search engine rankings.
I remember my website getting picked up by a person who had over 1M people on his Facebook. He shared my website on his Facebook page which drove an insane amount of traffic to the site which leads to greater traffic growth.
You really don’t know what’s going to happen in the future and who’s reading. I always like to remind myself that a view/visitor isn’t a number. It’s a real human being, with real values and problems.
You never know who’s reading and where your content will take you.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
I feel like my business hasn’t fully taken off yet but I’m at the turning point. For example, I recently interviewed a very successful entrepreneur who was making over 8 figures online.
He said that my website will go through the hockey stick growth where it will be flat for years and then slowly it will increase and then suddenly, a sharp spike up.
Over the past 4 years, it’s been slowly increasing, however, lately, things are moving a lot quicker. I think I’m very close to the huge spike in traffic where my site and youtube channel will blow up.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I’ve learned so much that I can easily write another book about it. However, if there was one thing that I learned it would be the compound effect.
You cannot build a successful website overnight. It takes time. It takes many articles. If you’re getting 1 visitor to one article per day, then if you write 1,000 articles, then you could be getting 1,000 visitors per day.
To write those articles, will take time. The only way to get there is to write every day and then let the compound effect kick in.
Eventually, one day, you’ll look back and realize you’ve written over 1,000 articles and you’re generating a ton of traffic.
I’ve personally written over 1,200 articles so far and will continue to keep writing unless I’m completely incapacitated.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
In terms of tools, I obviously use WordPress as my main content management system. I love WordPress because it’s so easy to use, customizable, and fun.
I also use Paypal to process payments and I use other people’s affiliate marketing links. In terms of SEO, I use Yoast WordPress plugin to beef up my copy and also Google Keywords to find the best keywords to target.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I would have to say Darren Hardy’s Compound Effect has had a major influence over the progression of my business for it’s the choices you make every day that add up to your waistline, wallet, and relationships.
In terms of income generation, I owe a lot to Grant Cardone’s work. I highly recommend people to sign up to his Grant Cardone University where he teaches people how to sell, manage objections, close deals, and more. Also, buy all his books and listen to his audio recordings.
I would also like to add that you have to be extremely careful who you listen to in the personal development world. I made the mistake of listening to everyone and believing that what they say as gospel.
My criteria for selecting a mentor would be to make sure that this person has genuine results. You can check their background, history, etc to make sure they are the real deal. Next, apply some of their teaches and see if it makes an impact on your life that you can measure.
For example, if you’re looking for a mentor to help you increase your income, if you took their course and actually made money from it, then that person is worthy of study. However, if you subscribe to a guru who is focused on motivation, you can’t really measure that and it’s not going the pay the bills or help you close deals.
Mindset and personal development can go on for years. You need to measure everything and make sure that 1 + 1 = 2.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Just start. Seriously. It’s never going to be perfect. You’ll never have all your ducks lined up and there will never be the right time. Just register your domain name and go for it. It took me a few years after registering my domain name to figure out what I wanted to do. You won’t have it all figured out and you’ll always evolve.
Things change, people change so don’t expect to get it all correct in the first go. You’ll fall over, make mistakes, crash and burn but most importantly, as corny as it sounds, don’t give up because the silver lining is there.
You have to always stay strong and be relentless.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
At the moment, I’m looking for people who are good at editing videos. I have a ton of videos I need edited so anyone keen on the position, send your CV in.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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